What Does 1 Samuel 14:5 Mean in the King James?
The forefront of the one was situate northward over against Michmash, and the other southward over against Gibeah.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The “forefront” is a tooth of rock: two projecting edges mark the passage.
THE MEANING
Your way through can have two hard edges facing across it and still remain a way. The boundaries do not erase the opening between them; they give it shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The way does not have to wait for every obstacle to disappear before it can exist.
THE ROOT
שֵׁן
shen
GROWS FROM
שׁנן
To sharpen or whet.
The Hebrew word translated “forefront” is literally “tooth,” giving the crags the shape of sharp projections. The same word-family carries the sense of sharpening, so the English hides how pointedly these two edges define the passage.
ALSO GROWS
shen: Tooth; also a sharp rock or crag.
שֵׁן
The crag is pictured as a tooth jutting into the terrain.
veshinnantam: “You shall sharpen them,” rendered “teach them diligently” in Deuteronomy 6:7.
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם
The shared sharpening image echoes the pointedness of the rock edges.
גִּבְעָה
gibʿah
GROWS FROM
גבע
g-b-ʿ
Hill or raised ground.
Gibeah names the landform itself: the hill. Alongside the “tooth” of rock, the place name keeps the verse’s terrain in view.
ALSO GROWS
gibʿah: Hill; the form behind the name Gibeah.
גִּבְעָה
The name makes the elevated terrain part of the verse’s meaning.
gevaʿ: Hill; the related form behind the place name Geba.
גֶּבַע
The related form shows the same hill-language recurring in place names.
THE PATTERN
A way through can be held between opposing boundaries and still open toward life and breadth.
And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.THE THREAD
And between the passages, by which Jonathan sought to go over unto the Philistines’ garrison, there was a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side: and the name of the one was Bozez, and the name of the other Seneh.This verse identifies the two crags as edges of a passage. Hebrew repeats שֵׁן (shen, “tooth”) in both verses, while the KJV renders the image as “sharp rock” in verse 4 and “forefront” in verse 5.
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